Terry Shames's Blog: 7 Criminal Minds, page 194

Turning Pages

What’s on your reading pile?
by Dietrich Kalteis
I read more novels last year than in the past few years, yet my reading stack only grew higher. There are just so many good books, both new releases and ones I never got around to when they were first released, plus there are classics that I like to revisit from time to time.
After finishing Dennis Lehane’s The Drop , which I loved, I wanted more and got hold of World Gone By . Both books are page turners from beginning to end. He’s got such a gritt...

My To-Be-Read list

This week I get to talk about one of my favorite subjects: what’s in my reading pile.
Since the pile is somewhere around 500 books deep, I’ll have to cherry-pick. To start with, I’ll mention the books I brought with me on my book tour. I had picked up a copy of a book that was popular a few years ago, Norwegian By Night, by Derek B. Miller, and am halfway through it. It’s a very different read: philosophical, at times funny, at times poignant, and occasionally thrilling. I’m hoping to finish i...

A Hard Day's Write

How do you set real life aside and connect with the imaginary worlds you create? And how long do you write each day/week?

by Paul D. Marks

I’ll answer the second question first: Not enough. Especially these days. And I have no idea where the time goes, but it does. I have the luxury of not having a day job and working at home and I still don’t know where the time goes. I’m pretty disciplined, but life happens and keeps me from doing as much writing as I might like to do or have done in the past...

Take one vulture . . .

How do you set real life aside and connect with the imaginary worlds you create?  And how long do you write each day/week?
by Catriona
I've been scraping round the dusty corners of my brain trying to work this out for the last ten minutes - gazing out the window at a bit of dead wood sticking up, that looks like a perching vulture. Or maybe a small hawk. But I'm a crimewriter, so vulture. Which would be a terrible way to find a corpse in your garden, wouldn't it? You're admiring a bird, won...

Murderous nocturnal activities by Cathy Ace

<!--[if gte mso 9]>

Get Lost & Write by RM Greenaway

While thinking about this week's question I realized that writing is a form of meditation. People say meditation is good for you, and so far my reply has been "I can't. The brain won't shut down." But from now on I'll tell them I'm a Meditation Master.
Because when writing is going well, we do shut down. We get pulled in and disappear, life as we know it disappears too, and time warps. We're connected with our imaginary world, and don't want to leave it. That's a kind of meditation, I think, e...

When the Washing Machine Calls, Don't Answer

Q: How do you set real life aside and connect with the imaginary worlds you create? And how long do you write each day/week?

-from Susan
A: Depends.
If the writing is under contract with a deadline, it’s easy to stay focused. I have a due date and so I aim to write a set number of words a day and that motivator works for me. If it is 1,000 words, I might only get to 750 on Monday, but may be in the zone and do 2,500 Tuesday. I was once a newspaper reporter and then editor, and deadlines were wh...

Cover Story: A STONE’S THROW

From Jim

Since we’re freestyling this week, I’m writing about some recent news that made me very happy: the cover reveal of my sixth Ellie Stone mystery, A STONE’S THROW.

August 1962. A suspicious fire claims a tumbledown foaling barn on the grounds of the once-proud Tempesta Stud Farm, halfway between New Holland and Saratoga Springs, NY. The blaze, one of several in recent years at the abandoned farm, barely prompts a shrug from the local sheriff. That is until "girl reporter" Ellie Stone, fi...

Why a writer?

by Dietrich Kalteis
I missed out on the question why I became an author a couple weeks ago, and since this week’s a free for all, here’s my chance.
Being a writer had been a dream since I was a teenager and penned a draft of a novel in longhand. That one never got past the shoebox of handwritten looseleaf pages stuffed under the bed, and it took quite a bit more time for me to get a novel published and to take myself seriously as an author. I’d talked about it off and on for years, but real lif...

How Much is Too Much?

By R.J. Harlick
This week I get to write on whatever topic I want to write about.
I had intended on writing on a completely different topic until I finished a book last night. It was a recent book from William Kent Kreuger’s Cork O’Connor series. I won’t say which one, so as not to spoil the ending. I had hesitated reading this book, primarily because of a concern over too much violence. A number of years ago I had picked up a much earlier book in the series, thinking it was my kind of book. A...